Congress Fights & Flirts with More Bad Policy

The House of Representatives is trying to craft the perfect “omnibus spending bill” to fund the government in 2016 – and they need to reach an agreement fast. It’s being held up by the regular partisan fights over allocation, but we’re seeing Syrian refugees take center stage. House Republicans, who draft the budget first, included language reinforcing the SAFE Act, a bill that passed the House last week to make the resettlement of Syrian refugees nearly impossible by adding untenable requirements to the vetting process. House Democrats who voted for the SAFE Act last week are balking at including it as a budgetary provision. Why? Well, in the intervening time, a bi-partisan bill that targets the Visa Waiver Program – not the refugee resettlement program – for enhanced security measures has been introduced in the Senate. And while we’d love to tell you it’s a better bill, we can’t do that quite yet.